“This guy’s name is Tom Perez and he may as well be Hugo Chavez, and that is not an exaggeration,” Limbaugh began, saying Perez was “the guy in the Department of Justice in the civil rights division who made the call not to prosecute the New Black Panthers.”

Limbaugh said listeners should imagine George W. Bush nominating someone who didn’t prosecute the Ku Klux Klan when they engaged in voter intimidation. “And then after not prosecuting klanners for that, then imagine what would happen if Bush turned around and nominated the Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan to a cabinet position where he would be deciding on discrimination lawsuits,” he said. “There would be unmitigated hell to pay — if George W. Bush put a klansman in his cabinet there would be hell to pay, that’s essentially what’s happened here.”

“I don’t know why anyone pays attention to rush Limbaugh or pays him any mind,” said Republican strategist Danny Vargas, who served as co-chair for Mitt Romney’s Hispanic outreach “Juntos con Romney” in Virginia. “He’s in the business of inflammatory remarks. Those of us trying to focus on moving the country forward don’t pay attention to rush Limbaugh and his ilk.”

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele, who worked with Perez in Maryland when he served as lieutenant governor and Perez was a member of the Montgomery County Council, also chided Limbaugh.

“I think we just need to be a little more tempered here,” Steele said, according to the Huffington Post. “I just don’t see a basis for, you know, Chavez? How did we jump to that? Oh, because he’s Hispanic? Oh, got it, got it, alright. Again, you can’t take that seriously, and that’s what the American people are tired of, quite frankly.”

Steele praised Perez, saying he would be a good labor secretary, and Vargas echoed those sentiments.

“Am I 100 percent in agreement with everything Thomas Perez has done? No, but he’s a qualified individual who the president nominated,” he said.

Vargas lumped Limbaugh together with another conservative talker who is often on the wrong end of controversy.

“To the extent anyone is paying attention to Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, they’re in it for ratings and to be as inflammatory as possible,” he said.